RHS Throwback: Nancy Duarte: How to Create Persuasive Stories With Data

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Speaker 4 hey guys we're more than 10 episodes into this new podcast, the Ryan Hanley Show.

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Thank you. All right.

Speaker 5 Our guest today,

Speaker 5 epic, epic Nancy Duarte.

Speaker 5 Nancy has been instrumental in the crafting of my own presentations that I've given throughout my career as a professional speaker in her book, Resonate, which I keep as a textbook on my desk at all times.

Speaker 5 I use it every time I work on a new segment of one of my presentations.

Speaker 5 And it is just an absolute pleasure to have her on the show, talk through not just presenting and her new book, Data Story, but also get some insights into how she leads her organization.

Speaker 5 It is special, it is unique, and it is a model that I think more organizations should follow. I give you the amazing Nancy Duarte.

Speaker 7 To kind of get into things, I'd like to start.

Speaker 8 I'd actually like to start with an article that I found that you wrote. And

Speaker 8 it was one of the most recent ones you wrote on LinkedIn. But what I found interesting about it was

Speaker 8 some of your takes on leadership. And this is actually where I want to start with you, just having owned your own company for a while and

Speaker 8 being, you know, fairly successful in that endeavor.

Speaker 8 I was interested in your take on entrepreneurship.

Speaker 8 I have been

Speaker 8 both staff level all the way up to executive leadership and the various companies that I've been a part of. And I've come across so many different takes on how to, on this particular topic.
And I've,

Speaker 8 this might be, I don't know if this makes sense to you, but I've, I've found, I feel like we're spreading to two schools of thought.

Speaker 8 One is an incredibly hierarchical, authoritarian, dictorial relationship. It's, I'm the person, I know what to do, listen to me, do it.
You know, I've come across that.

Speaker 8 I don't love that in any regard. And then I've also come across the antithesis to that, which is this, let's go super flat.
Everyone's got an opinion. Everyone has a place.

Speaker 8 And I also have not found incredible success in that model either. And

Speaker 8 where I've started to land is this idea of a hierarchical structure with a strong focus on this idea that you wrote about of entrepreneurship, of allowing people to kind of

Speaker 8 find their own path or the ability to reach out into things in addition to maybe what their day-to-day role is.

Speaker 8 And I just, I read this article, it hit my brain and I was like, I really want to get her take on this idea.

Speaker 8 So we can start there.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Want me to just blather here?

Speaker 7 Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 10 This is a blather.

Speaker 8 This is a pro-blather show.

Speaker 7 So you just roll.

Speaker 11 you know

Speaker 11 what we're trying to do we have a set of values that actually spells the word bliss it wasn't on purpose one of my writers was like that's the acronym for bliss and it's belong lead innovate and serve and so what what not everybody feels like they can innovate but I'm giving everyone permission to innovate here so one of my dreams because my name is on the building and my name is on the books I think people think I'm the central figure of this story and it's harder to change that when your name is on all of these things and so one of the directives we have right now is dwarfians publish like dwarfians need to invent and they need to publish and

Speaker 11 the reason that I'm doing that is I want the long the long history of this brand to be wow really people really smart people work there and you can build a body of work if you go to work there because I think everyone has something inside of them that's worth sharing and spreading and that's what we're trying to do is get people to write books or write articles or be inventors and and pioneer new things.

Speaker 11 So we have one whole entire service that we do right now, our speaker coaching. We didn't do that just five years ago.
My team decided we need to be in that business.

Speaker 11 They started to offer it to the top CEOs in the world, which we already worked with. And they invented this whole service.
And it's millions a year now. So it's like...

Speaker 11 I wasn't always good at this.

Speaker 11 I didn't necessarily know how to listen clearly to these ideas

Speaker 11 because I was the hub and I felt like, wow, that's more work than I can take on to make your idea become real.

Speaker 11 Like I used to think I had to be the one to build out the strategy, to take it over the finish line. But I found if they have the passion, just let them take it, build it, bring it to market.

Speaker 11 like nurture it all the way through the process. And I never used to be that kind of a leader.

Speaker 11 I used to think that when people came with ideas, it would feel like a burden, like their idea was put on my shoulders and it would be more things on my plate to do but now i realize that it gets done with more passion and more and better and and better than if i was to to be the one driving it what was that transition point for you mentally as a leader because i think that's that feels like a fairly

Speaker 8 progressive idea that not many leaders are maybe

Speaker 8 i don't want to say unwilling maybe that they've never even contemplated the idea of allowing their people to build a body of work.

Speaker 8 That feels like a fairly foreign idea, yet it, to me, it like immediately resonates.

Speaker 8 So I would love to just talk through a little bit of how you got there or at what moment you were like, this is something that we can do and it's not going to negatively impact my business.

Speaker 11 Yeah, a couple of things happened too. I had,

Speaker 11 actually, it was my son-in-law, super bright, super smart. He had two software ideas early on.
And I was just like, whoa, that sounds like a lot of work. I'm not a software CEO.

Speaker 11 Yeah, he had the idea for Dropbox and the code and we were using it already, like eight years before Dropbox was even anyone's idea.

Speaker 11 And if I had really recognized the opportunity and really cultivated it and even just hired the staff to turn that into an actual product, he dumped it out in the public domain instead.

Speaker 11 And everybody like grabbed it up and there's even some hints of it as possibly some of the source code for really big tools like that.

Speaker 11 And then I had a lot of sorrow in feeling like, oh my God, was it that I didn't listen? Was it that I'm it would have been dependent on me? Like, why? Because

Speaker 11 my son-in-law is one of the most bright and thoughtful communicators, and he was begging me, no, this is a really big idea. And I think I had to start to get an executive team I trust where I wasn't

Speaker 11 where I could actually hear and understand and be able to invest in. What happened for me as far as like letting other people now come and create a body of work is

Speaker 11 I don't want the Duarte name in the future.

Speaker 11 Who's Gartner? Who's Deloitte?

Speaker 11 Who are these people? And are there really big people behind these brands? Because in McKinsey, we don't necessarily know those people well. We know the legacy and we know the companies they are now.

Speaker 11 And I woke up about, I guess it was a couple years ago and I was just like, you know what, I don't want my name on a big services firm.

Speaker 11 I want my name, the Duarte name, to be on a lasting kind of packaged bodies of work with training material that transform lives.

Speaker 11 And kind of going through this sense of the kind of legacy that I felt like the name I wanted associated with. I asked my kids too.

Speaker 11 I was like, what if you woke up in 20 years and Duarte, like the name just is somebody else's?

Speaker 11 Would you, and there was some big scandal, like somebody at this company called Duarte did something really stupid and it affected, got up, the SEC got involved and it affected someone's stock prices.

Speaker 11 Would you feel like your name was run through the mud? And they were like, yeah, I would. Even though we're not even involved in the business, that would hurt.

Speaker 11 And I thought, you know, how do I protect from that? How do I make it so this brand has meaning where people can come and do human flourishing and create bodies of work? So that's what we've turned.

Speaker 8 to and we um the next iteration of us is really beautiful it's um it's uh in process i have all the plans in place but we haven't announced anything yet so your listeners are hearing it before the team does but it's um i'm super excited about it that's so you said a word in there that um that that bounces around my head constantly and i don't know if it's because uh i have two uh younger sons one is uh soon to be six the other soon to be four and especially the older one has started to ask questions and show interest and really um I don't want to say become a person because that happens earlier, but like, but like, you know, he is his own guy, but he also is watching me intensely every move, every word.

Speaker 8 If I use a word that he doesn't understand, he's like, dad, why did you use that word? What does that word mean?

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 8 And it's, it's awesome. It's also incredibly frustrating because I have to like dig into my dictionary and my mind constantly.
I'm like, I don't really know why I use that word.

Speaker 8 And then like the other thing he doesn't understand is context. So like, like we have this big argument around the word stupid.
So I'm like, you can't, it's not nice to call a person stupid.

Speaker 8 But if I'm saying my own idea is stupid, there's an acceptability there and there's context and nuance. I'm trying.
And he just, he's struggling with that. We're working on that.

Speaker 7 But

Speaker 10 that's all to say that

Speaker 8 something about this and just, I don't know, where my career is in general, I really started to think about the word legacy and what that,

Speaker 8 what does that actually mean?

Speaker 8 And how much time, effort should we put into the idea of legacy? And you just used the word, so I want to get your perspective on that.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it's funny. We've been at this business for 31 years, and that's a long time.
Probably it's older than a lot of your listeners. And

Speaker 11 it's not until, for me,

Speaker 11 I was on a podcast about seven years ago, and they were like, well, how do you define success? And I was like, God, I'd never even thought about that because they were like, oh, you're done.

Speaker 11 Like, you are successful. And I thought, you know, you're not successful until you've had a season of giving back to me.
Like, that's when you know you're successful.

Speaker 11 When you're like, whoa, I've compiled all these skills. I've compiled all this

Speaker 11 know-how and knowledge. And now I need to somehow get that out.

Speaker 11 This is a phase, I think, of my legacy, my dream.

Speaker 11 My target audience is entrepreneurs, love them. So my husband and I are actually going to do a channel about marriage, life, family.

Speaker 11 How are you an entrepreneur? And really kind of nail it. My kids turned out.
My marriage is just unbelievably stunning.

Speaker 11 Like it's just, so that would actually is what I'm hoping becomes more of my legacy where I can actually help people

Speaker 11 not just with their speaking gigs, but can help them. But, you know, do people want to hear about marriage from the presentation lady, right? That's where I'm struggling a bit.

Speaker 11 But legacy to me is what you leave behind. And sometimes I worry about how everything is digital now.
Everything's a digital artifact.

Speaker 11 And when I was a little kid, I had a terrible, it was a hard upbringing. But I would go in the basement and I would escape.
into my Uncle Richard's box. He had this box of artifacts.

Speaker 11 Like he built and managed a very famous hotel in Portland. He had letters from Helen Keller.

Speaker 11 You know, it's just this, I just thought, oh my God, I've never, this is, this is a life I never would have known about if I hadn't had access to Uncle Richard's box, great Uncle Richard.

Speaker 11 And I would escape into these artifacts. And I thought, you know, where are the artifacts today? So I keep a box.
Like about every three years, I have a banker box full of artifacts.

Speaker 11 That if one day my children or my children's children's children's children want to know that today I was on a podcast with you, right?

Speaker 11 I have all my notes, I have artifacts of physical artifacts from my life that's also part of a legacy

Speaker 12 that

Speaker 11 can live on, you know, after I'm gone, which will happen one day.

Speaker 8 So there's a lot in there that I want to unpack. One, I agree with you on the physical artifact idea.
I actually was listening to Ryan Holiday, who is

Speaker 8 never met him personally, but a mentor from afar. I love his work.
I'm actually plowing through stillness as a key is newest book. Like I was doing that.

Speaker 8 I actually, if it wasn't for iPhone notifications, I may have been late to this because I was reading the book and then it went.

Speaker 7 And I was like, oh, crap, I got to go get ready.

Speaker 9 But

Speaker 7 that's why we,

Speaker 11 it's good.

Speaker 8 I'm actually such a geek. I bought the like autographed version, like the one of the, you know, like stamps, you know, whatever.

Speaker 8 So, you know, you said something, you said a bunch of things in there.

Speaker 8 And the first one that I wanted to unpack was, do they want to hear from the presentation lady? And the idea, I, you know, it was funny. Um, I've listened to you do other podcasts.

Speaker 8 I've read your work. Um, and what's interesting is that's the first time I've ever heard the resistance in your voice.

Speaker 8 And that to me, um, I shouldn't say surprising because I know we all deal with it at wherever we are in our career, but I think that more than ever, people want to hear from different individuals in all different walks of life, specifically someone who has lived the type of life that you have, because so many of the stories today are not,

Speaker 8 I was able to raise a child who is productive in the world, or I was able to keep marriage together that's happy and productive and healthy. And

Speaker 8 I almost feel like, even though,

Speaker 8 you know, my life tends to be more small business and less entrepreneurial because I'm on the East Coast and I'm not in New York City.

Speaker 8 I feel like there is a swing back to, and like we just said, like Ryan Holiday's work is a big part of it. um and and many others uh Tim Ferriss James Altershirt you know all these uh Marcus

Speaker 8 there's there's a bunch of people that just this pendulum is swinging back to the idea of of happiness right and what that really means and not like the the fluffy happiness but like actually being okay inside um

Speaker 11 and contentment maybe

Speaker 8 contentment yeah the book i'm we just talked about stillness right like that idea and i think for you to share that journey as much as you are willing to is something that I actually think people would be hungry for.

Speaker 8 That's my perspective.

Speaker 11 Ah, well, that's cool. Yeah.
We, we, um, right now my business is a lot of B2B. And so I don't have as like a following like you would of more medium and small businesses.

Speaker 11 And so we're excited to do it. We're actually setting up a small set here this week to try to start to see if we can just have

Speaker 11 conversations, my husband and I, and see how it goes. We'll see.
I'll let you know. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 8 Well, I'll look forward to seeing when you, when you start to produce it. So let's, I want to talk about, you have a new book coming out.

Speaker 8 You've written, this is book number six, if I'm correct, five or six. Yeah.
And all of them have done incredibly well.

Speaker 8 And before we actually went live with the show, I shared with you that Resonate is a, is a textbook for me.

Speaker 8 I have certain books in my life, and I've talked about this on the show previous, that become textbooks. They stay near my desk at all times.
I reference them. They're beating the crap out of.

Speaker 8 They look like I've run them over with my car. They're dog eared.

Speaker 7 They're written in and marked up. And and I'm completely cool with that, right?

Speaker 8 So,

Speaker 8 and, and that book, for, for those who haven't read it, helped me create many of the stories and structure that I tell in the presentations that I give for anyone who's ever listened.

Speaker 8 Your newest book that's come out, Data Story. Um, this is actually an area that I think

Speaker 8 I have struggled.

Speaker 8 So when I heard that this book was coming out and that I'd have the opportunity to talk to you, I was very excited because this is an area that I know I've struggled both internally, right?

Speaker 8 Like in sharing numbers, sharing data, crafting a story around it.

Speaker 8 And it's like a skill that I would say I've learned through a lot of hard beats.

Speaker 8 And then also when you're conveying that maybe in a more classical sense to an audience, sharing data and how do you make it interesting and exciting. And

Speaker 8 so maybe just let's start with why is it so hard to

Speaker 8 add data to stories that make it meaningful? Like why is that something that I feel like we just intrinsically struggle with?

Speaker 11 Yeah, I think that's an interesting question because some people, 67% of jobs today are impacted by data.

Speaker 11 So there's the people who are like, I didn't sign up to go to work to even deal with data, right? And there's this hesitation to be like, why do I have to spend a minute?

Speaker 11 Sometimes I say I'd rather peel my fingernails back than work in Excel, right? So there's the people who have to embrace data because it is inevitable.

Speaker 11 And then there's the people who spend their whole life in the data and they don't know how to communicate.

Speaker 11 So there's communicators that don't understand data and data geeks who don't understand how to communicate. And this is written for both types of audiences.
And

Speaker 11 there is so much data that people don't know what to do with it. So when you dig into the data, you either find a problem or you find an opportunity.

Speaker 11 Once you dig in the data and you find that, then you have a communication problem. You have to tell others what was in the data and what do we need to do about it.

Speaker 11 So I loved writing this book. Each one of my books, I feel like I get some sort of master's degree or something in the process.

Speaker 11 Yeah, this was a really fun one and it's resonating pretty deeply with those that work in data.

Speaker 8 So here's, so we get a bunch of numbers, right?

Speaker 8 And I think where I Where I struggled early in my career with the idea of expressing data is, say, I'm on the staff level and my nose is in the Excel spreadsheet all day long. I know it up and down.

Speaker 8 I know every formula, every chart. And, and I, and I come out and I guess what my problem would always be is, I just wanted to barf this.

Speaker 7 I have every, I have it all.

Speaker 8 Here it goes. Like, let me just get it like all out on the table.

Speaker 8 And the very first thing that would happen is whoever I was talking to, it's like they would throw their hands up and say, you know, I. you gotta,

Speaker 8 this is way too much for me. I can't take this fire hose in.

Speaker 8 So I guess, you know, how do we start to piece that apart and find the pieces that maybe from someone whose nose is in the spreadsheet, you know, I just want to tell you everything I know versus what the person who maybe is going to make the decision or the committee or whatever the body is that you actually are presenting to, you know, how do we filter what is necessary from what isn't?

Speaker 11 I think because it takes so much work to go into the data and find things.

Speaker 11 Sometimes we have a hard time letting go of things we found that we think are special, but have nothing to do do with getting us where we want to go so one of the things we propose is that you learn how to filter up the parts that are needed for the decision making and then you can have a massive appendix but call it an appendix like don't stick all your deep thinking and closely intangentially related charts don't put that in the front just make a big old you can have 300 page appendix you can make it look like you're as smart as a cookie to those above you but you don't need to put that in the main narrative and i think people forget and some there it's called the thud factor sometimes it comes from the big consultancy when they would print out their PowerPoint deck it'd be 200 pages thick it's like a big old REMA paper you walk in you thud drop it right on it and it's like oh wow I paid for two million dollars worth of research that REMA paper looks like about two million dollars worth of research and that's not what you have to do for decision making around data it doesn't have to be that dense now early in your career you may have to have a really thick appendix of all the thinking you did but as you move up and up and up and you become more of a trusted advisor you don't have to include all of that because they know you went to the right data sets you synthesized it the right way and now you're communicating and they trust you because you have a long history of being able to make decisions from data so that kind of is a good filtering device then what's interesting is this body of work I built the whole thing and then I thought you know I always use Steve Jobs and his work as a sounding board so when I was done with the whole book I have transcribed everything that Steve Jobs said publicly and I have the transcripts of it.

Speaker 11 So I did a find on every time he talked about data and I thought, oh, this will validate. Because what I used to do is I would analyze what he said and I'd be like, oh, that's data.

Speaker 11 I'm going to skip it. I would look at the meaningful part.
And then I'd be like, oh, that's data. I'll skip it.
And so I used to just skip over how he framed data.

Speaker 11 And when I went back through it and figured out that he did so many things I covered in the book, he attached the data to something relatable. He gasped in awe, like he marveled at his own data.

Speaker 11 There's so many things he did that I touch in the book. He explained the data over time.
So he created suspense and surprise when he was communicating data.

Speaker 11 So it was really cool to go back, to go back and see that it was there the whole time. I just had never seen the pattern in how he spoke about data.

Speaker 8 Why doesn't the data speak for itself?

Speaker 8 Why do we have to integrate it into a story?

Speaker 11 You know what's funny is, you know, data purists will say that.

Speaker 11 The data does speak for itself in the sense that you can go and find the facts and even visualize the facts into a chart and then you can look at it and say, oh, this is, this means that.

Speaker 11 What's interesting that's happening now in tools like Tableau and other common tools is they're starting to have artificial intelligence. So you can now

Speaker 11 have Tableau can come and say, oh, based on the data you just put in, it looks like Jimmy Bobbin's sales quarter three over quarter three

Speaker 11 his sales have significantly dropped now it can analyze it like that and the data can quote speak for itself but what do you do about Jimmy Bob what is the action you take from that data that's where you need a communicator the data won't tell you the action to take it'll just present you the findings so in the moment where you have to take action and you have to go and have that conversation with Jimmy Bob or you have to decide how should Jimmy Bob behave differently in the future so he doesn't drop quarter over quarter tableau won't tell you that like these artificial intelligence won't.

Speaker 11 So I believe artificial intelligence will be able to observe data and synthesize data and tee up observations. But only a human will be able to take the right action every time.

Speaker 11 Because sometimes the right decision is make a decision counterintuitive to the data. And AI, no matter how much you train it, it won't make a

Speaker 11 counterintuitive decision for you. And it also won't use intuition.
And that's a big part of what you find in the data, what you need to communicate.

Speaker 11 You have to have a strong intuitive sense because there will always be a gap between what the data can tell you and the action you need to take.

Speaker 11 And you have to fill that gap with a little bit of intuition.

Speaker 8 Yeah, opportunity is so often in the non-obvious that

Speaker 7 you can't really

Speaker 8 kind of stuff. Exactly.

Speaker 5 So if I'm,

Speaker 8 so this makes sense to me if I'm staff level pitching up or, you know, whatever.

Speaker 8 Talk to me a little bit about.

Speaker 8 So I have had

Speaker 8 fellow executives in the past whose perspective was, I don't need you to understand. I need you to do what I tell you.
Talk to me a little bit. Obviously,

Speaker 8 that's not a philosophy that I think either one of us would agree with.

Speaker 8 But talk to me a little bit about when we're pitching down. So when the leader has the data and we're selling down in, is there a different way of delivering it? Is it more,

Speaker 8 do we have to do we go even higher to the audience or do we have to then dig dig into the weeds a little more because we're talking to the people who actually handle this?

Speaker 11 Like, where do you, that's a great question.

Speaker 11 You know, I had a book called Illuminate that I wrote, and it was for leaders specifically to understand the emotional fuel that we call them their travelers, right?

Speaker 11 So there's the torchbearer and the traveler. So we came up with a model so that leaders would understand the right kind of emotional fuel.

Speaker 11 So first of all, as a leader, when you're going to communicate, you have to have a way to empathetically understand what's the emotional fuel your audience needs and how do they receive information.

Speaker 11 Where are we at in this journey and what role does data play? So when you're doing broad communication as a leader, you call it communicating down. We could call it communicating to all employees.

Speaker 11 Or let's say you're communicating to all shareholders. That's a huge,

Speaker 11 or you're on an earnings call or where it's really broad.

Speaker 11 There is ways to state data so it sticks. And so there's section four of this new book is all about how a leader needs to communicate

Speaker 11 so the data can be recalled, so that it's relatable, so that people can retell it, and so just so it sticks.

Speaker 11 And there's a lot of that, some things I was touching on, like revealing the data over time so that it creates suspense and surprise. There's connecting it to something that's relatable.

Speaker 11 Instead of stating the number, is there a number you can attach it to so that people can remember the scale? We talk about millions and billions like this is a normal thing today.

Speaker 11 And even trillions, only politicians hurl the word trillion around. But because that's how much debt we have.
But

Speaker 11 yeah, I think the way that they communicate is

Speaker 11 very important to peel it more like an onion instead of just broadcasting and blasting it. If you peel it like an onion, data can actually have a sense of an emotional appeal,

Speaker 11 which is important to do when you're trying to get people to transform because of a number.

Speaker 8 How important is, or maybe that's a wrong way of asking a question, but

Speaker 8 maybe talk to me a little bit about the packaging so that it is easily,

Speaker 8 you mentioned a couple, like making it relatable.

Speaker 8 But like, I feel, you know, one of the things, especially when I'm presenting to a board,

Speaker 8 which thankfully I no longer have to deal with, but in the past have.

Speaker 7 You know,

Speaker 8 when I was, when I was, when I was speaking or presenting findings to the board, I found it very necessary to

Speaker 8 deliver the data in a way that they could tell other people.

Speaker 8 Because what board members love doing, at least in the companies that I've worked for, they love telling each other how much they know about the company and if they have a data point that they can hold on to.

Speaker 8 And,

Speaker 8 you know, like, is it, I guess I'm butchering the question, but the idea is like packaging that number in a way that they can just share it. It's easy

Speaker 8 to use that over and over.

Speaker 8 Is there specific methods to that besides being relatable?

Speaker 11 Yeah, there's

Speaker 11 being relatable means like you know, we tie it to something that is more tangible.

Speaker 11 I think in the case of your exact scenario where you're trying to communicate it to a board, the best way to do that is to use a slide doc.

Speaker 11 It's to use a denser visual document that's skimmable so that they can understand it because they have to get their head around the bigger narrative.

Speaker 11 And then the data usually supports a broader narrative that you're trying to do.

Speaker 11 So, in this particular case, I think that there's a model in the book about communicating up and what it is that executives care about. And there's three things.

Speaker 11 So, if you're going to present data to them, it needs to hit the nerve of one of these three things, and that's money, market, or exposure.

Speaker 11 So, if it ties to one of those things that leaders are measured by, and the success of a company is measured by, it'll resonate with them in a way that

Speaker 11 they'll feel like, well, yeah, this needed my attention, of course, because it has to do with money, market, or exposure.

Speaker 11 So under money, we're trying to drive revenue and profit up and trying to drive costs down. In market, we're trying to grow in market share, move market share up in time to market down.

Speaker 11 And under exposure, we're trying to drive up retention, which is anything from clients and employees to partners and shareholders, and we're trying to drive risk down.

Speaker 11 So if you are preparing something for a board member and you're wanting to associate data with it, you need to make sure it's in one of these categories.

Speaker 11 You shouldn't be really sharing that much data outside of this set of things they care about. And if there's too much of things that aren't going to resonate at them at a core,

Speaker 11 they won't understand why you even needed to put the data in front of them because these are the things they're measured by.

Speaker 11 And if you're not supporting their measurement and not them, but the company too, then it feels like superfluous data.

Speaker 11 So, connecting it to a thing an executive cares about and something that an executive is measured by

Speaker 11 would be really smart. And in my analysis, I actually,

Speaker 11 we have the privilege of working with the highest performing brands in the world, and I grabbed 2,000 data slides from seven brands.

Speaker 11 And I looked at the parts of speech and the chart that they chose to use. And the most important part of a part of speech in this case was the verb.

Speaker 11 What is the action that they're asking people to do because of the data? And there's two types of verbs, which kind of goes to your question.

Speaker 11 One's a performance verb, and that's things like you could do KPIs of, and others are process verbs, and those are things that support this performance, right?

Speaker 11 Are all the processes I'm going to do so we reach this level of performance?

Speaker 11 And those are also things that you could be really conscious of as you're communicating up is, am I using a process verb or am I actually using a performance verb?

Speaker 11 Because executives tend to be measured on the performance verbs and not the process verbs.

Speaker 8 Yeah, they're less concerned with how the soup is made and

Speaker 8 more people are eating the soup.

Speaker 7 Exactly.

Speaker 8 exactly so just i one last spin that i want to put on on this a little bit just to is like i said earlier my world tends to be more mid-size and small business professionals um some of which entrepreneurial but you know just

Speaker 8 i'm assuming a lot of them are maybe listening to this and saying to themselves how do i take this because this is great internally and how do i take some of these ideas and start to spin them in say marketing or in communications to my current clients?

Speaker 8 You know, is this a completely transferable idea? Are there nuances to it when you're communicating with say if you're you know like I said marketing advertising or retaining current clients?

Speaker 11 Yeah. So the

Speaker 11 bulk of the book and the premise of the whole thing is that you've dug in the data. Say you're a marketer.
You dug into the data and you found a finding.

Speaker 11 How do you shape that in a way that other people will understand it?

Speaker 11 And and you do use a three-act structure in here and it's in service of making a recommendation so you have all this marketing data and maybe you're like hey I want to the mark the data is telling me I need to spend more on pay per click because it's a it's results so it teaches you how to frame that up so your budget gets approved now once your budgets approved or once you have this idea and the boss the big boss is like

Speaker 11 You're such a great marketer. I love everything you do.
I'm going to go have you talk about this great big case study that you just did because you're freaking brilliant.

Speaker 11 I want you to go speak at a huge marketing conference. Like that changes the nature of your audience and it changes the nature of the data and how you'd communicate it.

Speaker 11 So that's where there's this moment where you're explaining the data, which is day to day in the marketing job, in the sales job. The data is driving all your decisions.

Speaker 11 But there's this moment in time where it's like, oh my God, this initiative you found in the data is so huge. I need you to speak at the all-hands meeting.
That's a completely different thing.

Speaker 11 And that's what the section four in the book is about is how do you now stand and deliver in a way that people can attach to the data and take action from it.

Speaker 11 So it's a different kind of an energy and both are true for something like marketing or for sales or for ops, internal ops, all of those roles.

Speaker 11 There's a high probability that if you start to become a strategic advisor, that you will have to start to drive change inside your organization and that requires you become a broad leader with really good presentation skills.

Speaker 11 You've seen what that's done like to your own career, right? When you can actually command a stage and command a room,

Speaker 11 you actually start to be followed even before the company might recognize you as a leader.

Speaker 8 If anything, it feels to me like building these types of narratives off of data can help someone who's early in their speaking career because there's less,

Speaker 8 you can be more structured in how you deliver them when you're taking a more ethereal idea and trying to pull it into a narrative.

Speaker 8 Not that that's not very powerful as well, but oftentimes if you're not, if you're not very, if you're not experienced or or maybe slightly, or if you're new to the speaking or being in front of an audience, sometimes that can be a little tougher than if you know what you have to say and the numbers.

Speaker 8 And this feels like a really

Speaker 8 sound way of maybe

Speaker 8 getting in front of audience.

Speaker 11 Now that we have access to so much data, I think there's more pressure to say, well, is that just an ethereal idea or is it grounded in data? Right. Even, I mean, we're a medium-sized business.

Speaker 11 I have 120 staff and about 40 contractors.

Speaker 11 And even in my own exec meetings now, I used to be be able to say, Gosh, you know, based on listening to customer calls and based on this, this is I really feel we need to head this direction.

Speaker 11 And they'd be like, Okay, yeah, or ask a few questions. Now it's like, is there any data? Can we get any data to prove that that's the direction we should go?

Speaker 11 And so it's actually kind of sometimes slows people down. And it's actually one of the reasons I wrote the book: it's like, we could sit and dig.

Speaker 11 I could have three people full-time just digging in data, but for what? Like, are we really going to reach different outcomes than we would if we know the direction we need to head? So, So

Speaker 11 yeah, that's one of the reasons I bought it was I was like, data is actually slowing us down here. And I wanted a faster way for decisions to be made internally and for us to be able to

Speaker 11 communicate it in a way that people will understand it and want to change because of the data.

Speaker 8 In finishing our conversation today, I want to just spin back to your leadership experience and ask you, in specific to what you just said, the idea of data slowing you down.

Speaker 8 And I don't know that I've ever voiced that, but I've certainly felt it.

Speaker 8 I tend to,

Speaker 8 you know, there are times when it's like, okay, we've seen the numbers.

Speaker 8 You know, especially when we're doing projections or we're taking something and then trying to extrapolate what that will mean for us in the future, as much as I think those are

Speaker 8 exercises with value at a certain point, you have no idea what your world is going to look like in three years.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 8 how, from a leadership position, and some of this can be just your own feelings of flavor,

Speaker 8 How do we manage that? When do we say, okay, enough data.

Speaker 8 I see it. I understand it.
And now here's where we're going to go. Like there is an art to all that science.
And I'm just interested in your take on that.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I think that so some people lead with data and they start there and then they have a hard time making a call because they can't collect it.

Speaker 11 Others are so heavily weighted to their intuition, they sometimes want to dismiss the data.

Speaker 11 And I've kind of gone both directions off and on situationally so if if it's a big decision like this next kind of reinvention of Dorte is a really big decision so I'm I had to hire somebody who's this just unbelievable like finance kind of model she could run models she could run scenarios she could do them over time like because I need to make sure that I'm not going to do anything like stupid that could actually hurt the company.

Speaker 11 But one of the other things that happens is if you're an empathetic leader, you tend to listen. So

Speaker 11 instead of collecting data like a freak, you tend to listen and listen and listen and listen. And you want to make sure you've listened to everybody and been empathetic to everybody.

Speaker 11 And that same thing can stall just as much as data can. So if data's on one side, empathy is on the other, or emotion, right, you want to make sure, oh my God, is everyone going to be happy?

Speaker 11 Is everyone going to be beside me if I make this big, bold decision? So both of those can stall, like the data can stall and trying to make everyone happy.

Speaker 11 And I'm just in this mode right now where it's like,

Speaker 11 I'm just calling a few shots and that's not been my nature.

Speaker 11 I try to get, I always have consensus on my exec team, but now I can't care so much who's going to be disappointed when I absolutely know the ship has got to turn this direction and those that can't or don't want to head that direction.

Speaker 11 That's okay. That's okay.
And there will be awkward moments and there might even be separations that have to happen.

Speaker 11 But I'm okay with that because once you know and you know that you know that you know that you are headed the right direction you can't worry about the you know who's on the bus who's not on the bus you have to just get the right people on the bus Jim Collins love him get the right people on the bus and then go the direction you need to know you need to go and I think I think that's the hard hardest part is being a CEO is when there's moments there's been a couple moments in my whole uh stint of 31 years where someone who beautifully and graciously got us to this point aren't the right ones to get us to the next point and and those have moments of sorrow and disappointment, and

Speaker 11 some of us just don't want to pull the trigger fast enough. And

Speaker 11 those are the kinds of decisions that make it hard. No matter what the data says, it still sometimes means we have to make a difficult human decision because the data says to.

Speaker 11 And those moments are probably the hardest leadership moments that a CEO will ever experience.

Speaker 8 Nancy, I want to just say thank you for your time.

Speaker 8 I think that the work that you've done for me as a communicator and someone who has a strong appreciation for anyone who shares a message in just about any space and how they do it, your work has been tremendously influential on me.

Speaker 8 But more importantly, thank you for your leadership insights. I know that some of that stuff people are comfortable talking about, others aren't.

Speaker 8 I definitely find a tremendous amount of value in trying to see how you manage your company. It helps me a lot.

Speaker 8 thank you.

Speaker 8 I appreciate you and your work.

Speaker 11 You are a fantastic host. Thanks for having me, Ryan.

Speaker 8 Thank you. I will have links to Nancy's book and everything on my site, but don't go there.
Go on Amazon or go to duarte.com.

Speaker 8 d-u-a-r-t-e.com. Go there, you'll find everything, all the books, all the insights.

Speaker 8 And I just wish you nothing but success on this pivot and your new reality TV show that you have coming and all the rest of it.

Speaker 11 Uh, thanks thank you, thank you so much. Enjoy your week, bye-bye.

Speaker 6 Bye.

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